Homemade Bone Broth

Nothing feels more right than making bone broth on a cool winter day! I just started doing this last year after reading a lot about the nutrients of homemade bone broth. Austin and I love using as much of the animal that we harvest as possible and this really plays a role in utilizing most of the animal! Each animal that we butcher we save the bones, typically it's in the middle of our busy hunting season so I freeze them for later use. Once I get a good bulk of bones in the freezer and have a couple days off I pull them out and get going!

The Ingredients

I am not expert on making bone broth but I will share my recipe that I have adapted from others to suit me. For this recipe you will need:

• 3 lb bones

• 3 Leeks

• 3 Celery

• 3 Carrots

• 3 Onion

• 7 cloves of garlic

• 2 Bay Leaves

• 1 tbsp Peppercorn

• 2 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

• Canning jars

• Pressure canner

Getting Started

First off I like to get all my ingredients out and prepared ready to go. Once my bones are defrosted from the freezer I weigh them on my kitchen scale. I tend to make big pots and then just double or triple my ingredients as I go. For one pot of venison bone broth I had 7 pounds of bones. I am not going to lie I don't measure this out to a tee, I tend to round and average and through it all in. This does tend to cause my husband some stress but it has turned out great both times...

I start by preheating my oven to 400 degrees. I place tin foil on a baking sheet and start roasting my bones while I cut up my vegetables. This step is supposed to help bring out the flavors and provide for richness to your broth. I roast for about 30-40 minutes. Meanwhile, I start bringing a big pot of water to a boil while waiting for the bones to and vegetables to roast. If I have room on my pans I will add the leeks, celery, carrots, onion, and garlic in the oven for this step. I tend to have two pans in the oven at the same time rotating in and out. As they are done I use tongs to transfer them from the pan to my pot of water.

Once all the ingredients from the pans are in the pot if water I make sure that the water is covering the bones about 2 inches above. Yes, I know, this is not an exact measurement but the bones need to be covered and this is my simple way. Most articles out there say to fill the pot up 2/3 the way up. But I always find just covering the bones a few inches tends to be comparable. After the bones, vegetables and water are in the pot and its cooking I add the remaining ingredients: peppercorn, apple cider vinegar, and bay leaves. I will say that I may add more garlic that most recipes but that is just simply a taste preference and if there are other seasonings you would like to add feel free! I tend to make it with these few spices so that way no matter what I use the bone broth for I can add seasoning to the dish to compliment it.

Now that you have everything in the pot I bring it to a boil. Once it reaches a boil I turn in down to a simmer and let it go for about 20-24 hours! Yes, you could do a shorter time but by letting it cook longer is allows more time for the nutrients to escape the bones and give you more health benefits. Keep in mind that if you have the heat on too high the water will evaporate faster and you made need to add water to keep bones covered at all times!

Timers Up!

After my broth has had plenty of time to simmer then its time to strain your broth. I will use another big pot and a strainer over my sink. This is usually a two man job but I have done it by myself. I strain the broth into a pot while discarding all my vegetable and other bigger items left behind. If you have chickens they will gladly eat the leftover vegetables so nothing goes to waste! After you are done straining the contents I let it cool down on the counter and once it is cool I place it in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I take the broth out you will see a nice white fat layer sitting on top. I will then scoop this layer off and toss it. You could leave it but sometimes it doesn't give the best flavor to the broth and friends may be weary of your broth since it settles at the top when you can it. Once I have scooped the fat off I then poor the broth into another pot straining it once again, but through cheesecloth this time. I would say this is my final filter to get any small pieces that might have gotten through my bigger strainer. You can find cheesecloth at any grocery store typically and its relatively cheap.

Next, I place the broth back on the stove top and start rewarming it and getting all my canning supplies ready!

Canning

Again I am a self taught canner and this is only my second year canning. I have gathered many tips and tricks from talking with others, reading, and researching. This is how I choose to do this next step and so far have had good success! I start by filling my canner with water to the bottom 3 quart line. This is what my canner instruction manual says to do for my specific pressure canner. I turn my stove on and get the water hot. At this point I have two burners on side by side. One has my broth that I want hot, and the other had the canner with water getting hot. While this is happening I clean my sink. I scrub it with soap and water and rinse it. I do this because I prefer to place my mason jars and lids in the sink with hot water while filling them. Some people run them through a hot cycle in the dishwasher, some people warm them in a hot pot of water. I prefer getting the water in my sink nice and hot and placing all my jars and lids in there. The idea here is that you need hot jars with hot contents going into a hot pressure canner. That way nothing breaks, that would be a situation I just wouldn't want to deal with.

Once everything is ready I place a kitchen bowl down and grab a paddle and start scooping bone broth into my jar using a funnel.

Once I have filled the jar up I measure with my little canning tool I picked up at the grocery store and keep approximately a 1 inch headspace. Different canning foods have different headspace recommendations and my specific pressure canner manual recommended the 1 inch headspace so I did just so.

I simply fill with the funnel until I think I am close to 1 inch then check with this device which has the measurements on the side. Adding a little more broth as needed to reach the correct line. Once I have done this I wipe off all water on the rim of the jar.

Once the rim is wiped I place the lid on and then place the jar in the pressure canner. You follow these steps until all the broth is gone or until your pressure canner is full with the first batch! I bought this fun tool I am using it allows you to grab the cans and place in and out of hot water without burning yourself! It works great and I highly recommend.

Once the pressure canner is full or ready to close you place the lid on the canner. You then wait for steam to come out of the top. Once this starts happening your indicator will pop up meaning that the canner is under pressure. This is when I place the cover on the pressure release valve and your gauge will slowly starting increasing. When the gauge reaches 11 psi of pressure then you want to lower your heat to keep it at this pressure for about 25 minutes. Since I mixed two different size jars I did 25 minutes but if you are only using pint jars then you can do just 20 minutes. The key here is when it starts reaching 10 keep a close eye and slowly decrease the heat. For example, my heat was on 5 or 6 on my stove and then as it got close if lowered it to 4 then it hit 11 and I set my timer for 25 minutes. I had to move my heat down to 2 and it kept the correct pressure the entire time. Obviously this is only an example with my stove but it can be confusing so I wanted to explain it.

Once the timer goes off an its been 25 minutes turn off the heat and let the pressure come back down to "0" on its own. Once the gauge reads "0" then you can pull off the cover over the pressure release valve and let the rest of the steam and built up pressure come out. After all noise stops and the indicator falls back down you now know the pot is not longer under pressure. At this point you can remove the lid and remove your cans.

I place them on a kitchen towel next to the pot where they will sit for at least 12 hours to assure they properly seal. Do not try to push down on the lid or move these because it could cause them to not seal correctly. You may start to hear popping sounds and that means they are properly sealing!

Like I said I did two big batches this time. I made one pot of venison bones and one pot of elk bones. With all those bones I had to do three batches of pressure canning to get all the jars done! I did one batch of venison only, one batch of elk only and then took the rest of the broths and mixed to make a venison and elk broth mix.

I hope you enjoyed this and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to reach out!!